Classics

'My God! A whole minute of bliss! Is that really so little for the whole of a man's life?'A poignant tale of love and loneliness from Russia's foremost writer.One of 46 new books in the bestselling Little Black Classics series, to celebrate the first...

Empire Thriller of the Month for April 2020. Blood will have blood… I lean forward on my elbows, so my face is only a few inches from his, so he hears every word when I lower my voice. “It must eat you alive, not knowing. Not knowing who,...

A haunting exploration of love, loss and community, Vesaas' lyrical novel portrays the powerful bond that forms between two 11-year-old girls - and a tragedy that changes everything. 'She was close to the edge now: the ice laid its hand upon her' The...

Following a man miraculously in tune with nature and far less so with his community, this nuanced masterpiece from the author of The Ice Palace is a striking and profoundly humane portrait of neurodiversity and the beauty and pain of seeing things...

One of Steinbeck’s touchstone novels, East of Eden is a grand family saga which explores themes almost biblical in their intensity. Through multiple generations of two families, Steinbeck crafts a brooding masterpiece of familial rivalry and...

Beautiful, bored and bourgeoise, Sabina leads a double life inspired by her relentless desire for brief encounters with near-strangers. Fired into faithlessness by a desperate longing for sexual fulfilment, she weaves a sensual web of deceit across New...

One of the greatest, most entertaining reading experiences in any language, Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time Vol. 1: The Way by Swann's is published in a new translation from the French by Lydia Davis in Penguin Classics.The Way by Swann's is one...

(Available after October 30th, 2022)I felt very still and empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo. Sylvia Plath's groundbreaking semi-autobiographical novel offers an intimate, honest...

A masterpiece of transgressive, surrealist erotica, George Bataille's Story of the Eye was the Fifty Shades of Grey of its era. This Penguin Modern Classics edition is translated by Joachim Neugroschal, and published with essays by...

The inspiration for the six-part series “Little Birds” from Sophia Al-Maria.These thirteen erotic short stories by the acclaimed author of Henry and June explore the nature of desire, taboo, and female sensuality.From the beach towns of...

National Book Award finalist Mary Gaitskill’s debut collection, Bad Behavior—powerful stories about dislocation, longing, and desire which depict a disenchanted and rebellious urban fringe generation that is searching for human...

California's fertile Salinas Valley is home to two families whose destinies are fruitfully, and fatally, intertwined. Over the generations, between the beginning of the twentieth century and the end of the First World War, the Trasks and the Hamiltons...

Marshalling wit and sharp political insight to deliver a passionate polemic calling for women’s intellectual and financial independence, Woolf’s seminal 1929 essay remains one of the twentieth century’s most influential pieces of...

A ruthless dissection of American life in the late 1960s, Joan Didion's Play It as It Lays captures the mood of an entire generation, the ennui of contemporary society reflected in spare prose that blisters and haunts the reader.Set in a place beyond...

'One of the very great writers of the last century' -- Guardian'Lispector had an ability to write as though no one had ever written before' -- Colm Toibin'He'd wait for her, she knew that now. Until she learned'Lori yearns for love yet is scared of...

Clarice Lispector's sensational, prize-winning debut novel Near to the Wild Heart was published when she was just twenty-three and earned her the name 'Hurricane Clarice'. It tells the story of Joana, from her wild, creative childhood, as the 'little...

Brilliantly capturing her young narrator's voice, Sagan's stiletto-sharp novella of entitlement, impetuosity and cruel tragedy on the Riviera is an ice-cool slice of essential summer fiction. Sylish, shimmering and amoral, Sagan's tale of adolescence...

A runaway teen and an ageing cat whisperer collide in this fabulist extravaganza that showcases all of Murakami’s philosophical playfulness and surreal exuberance. Kafka on the Shore effortlessly siphons the legacy of magic realism into...

'I am reduced to a thing that wants Virginia. I composed a beautiful letter to you in the sleepless nightmare hours of the night, and it has all gone. I just miss you...'At a dinner party in 1922, Virginia Woolf met the renowned author, aristocrat - and...

A haunting feminist sci-fi masterpiece and international bestseller that is “as absorbing as Robinson Crusoe” (Doris Lessing)   While vacationing in a hunting lodge in the Austrian mountains, a middle-aged woman awakens one morning to find herself...